The study described in the following article was done by Mirosoft, so run to the kitchen and get some grains of salt. "Microsoft's Linux and open-source lab on the Redmond campus has been running some interesting tests of late, one of which was looking at how well the latest Windows client software runs on legacy hardware in comparison to its Linux competitors. The tests, which found that Windows performed as well as Linux on legacy hardware when installed and run out-of-the-box, were done in part to give Microsoft the data it needed to effectively "put to rest the myth that Linux can run on anything." Do with the results as you please, but the topic is interesting nonetheless. What are your experiences?

Are you timing up to the little jingle noise, or are you meaning until you get a usable desktop. True it will present you with the desktop pretty quick, but click on the start menu and try to connect to ADSL or dial-up networking and you get no option to do so. The start menu will close again before the entries are there. Windows will give you a desktop quite fast, but it's not usable. As soon as I get into my KDE desktop it's usable for whatever I want, even restoring old session data (which windows doesn't do) KD is up and running faster than WinXP